The Woman in Black (2012)
Directed by James Watkins
The story follows a young lawyer, Arthur Kipps, who is ordered to travel to a remote village and sort out a recently deceased client’s papers. As he works alone in the client’s isolated house, Kipps begins to uncover tragic secrets, his unease growing when he glimpses a mysterious woman dressed only in black. Receiving only silence from the locals, Kipps is forced to uncover the true identity of the Woman in Black on his own, leading to a desperate race against time when he discovers her true identity.
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What critics compared The Woman in Black to
The story takes place in England at the turn of the 20th century, which is a particularly interesting historical moment to set a classical ghost story because the crumbling of older modes of life in the face of modern technology echoes the familiar tug-of-war between spirituality and rationality; the old ways hold on despite the force of social evolution (it is not surprising, in this regard, that Bram Stoker set Dracula, a story to which The Woman in Black owes no small debt, in the then-present tense of 1897, rather than in the past).
You might say that "The Woman in Black" is in a similar vein to the 2001 smash "The Others," but it isn't a narrative built entirely around a Shyamalanian twist ending.
Stuffed with such familiar period touches as mechanical toys and mysteriously opening doors, it suffers by comparison to such similar films as “The Orphanage” and “The Others.’’
This is what separates “The Woman in Black” from truly great ghost movies such as “The Innocents,” “The Haunting” and “The Others.”
It's lovely to see the Boy Who Lived move on, but don't expect The Woman in Black to be nearly as memorable as Harry Potter or as creepily mind-blowing as The Others .
The best ghost stories are the ones that rely on careful exposition and a pervasive sense of mounting dread to unsettle audiences (The Others and The Orphanage being modern examples), but director James Watkins and scripter Jane Goldman abandon that approach shockingly fast.
Watkins and his team pull out all the classic horror clichés to energize Jane Goldman’s flaccid and confused screenplay (she’s adapting Susan Hill’s 1983 novel), stealing cues from Juan Antonio Bayona’s far superior The Orphanage while desperately trying to emulate Alejandro Amenábar’s overrated The Others.
Fans of The Woman in Black (2012) would easily find this enjoyable.
Luckily, similar to The Woman in Black, most of the jump scares in Hokum are things that should legitimately shock us, rather than boring fakeouts.
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The film combines the gloomy aesthetics of “Wuthering Heights,” the apparitions, family secrets and betrayals of “The Woman in Black” with the murderous straight razor chills of “Sweeney Todd.”
It is some of the happier and more optimistic design we’ve seen from Kave Quinn, whose impressive filmography includes much darker tableaux like “The Woman in Black,” “Teen Spirit,” and even “Judy.”